Monday, January 31, 2011

Obama/Palin competitive in Nebraska

You can add Nebraska to the list of 'Sarah Palin swing states.' She leads Barack Obama there by only a single point at 45-44.

If the Republican candidate for President next year is any of the other current front runners the state should remain in the red column where it's been reliably for years. Newt Gingrich leads him by 8 in the state (48-40), Mitt Romney leads by 12 (49-37), and Mike Huckabee is ahead by 13 (51-38). Romney and Huckabee's advantages are pretty comparable to the 15 point margin John McCain won the state by in 2008.

Obama's not particularly popular in the state, with only 38% of voters approving of him and 56% disapproving. But with the exception of Huckabee voters aren't all that enamored with the leading Republicans either. 50% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of Palin to only 42% who see her in a positive light. Gingrich's numbers aren't much better with 43% rating him negatively to only 34% with a favorable opinion. Romney has net positive numbers by the slimmest of margins- 38% favorable and 35% unfavorable. Only Huckabee has real good personal numbers as 44% of voters have a positive opinion of him to 33% with a negative one.

Obama won an electoral vote in Nebraska in 2008 by taking the state's 2nd Congressional District and he would do so again if the election was today by a pretty healthy margin. His approval rating there is a positive 51/45 spread and he leads Romney by 9, Huckabee by 11, Gingrich by 19, and Palin by 24 there. The state may change the way it dispenses its electoral votes and there will probably be some changes in the district boundary lines but at least for now it looks like he would pick up a spare vote there just as he did the last time around.

Nebraska is certainly not going to be a swing state any time soon but it's a definite sign of weakness for the Republican field that voters don't think much of the leading potential candidates in one of the reddest states in the country. If Nebraskans don't like the GOP contenders you certainly can't expect that folks in Ohio or Florida or Virginia are going to. It will be interesting to see over the course of 2011 if anyone can emerge from the back of the pack with greater appeal to the voters- if that doesn't happen Obama could end up coasting to reelection.

Well, you had ~300 voters in each CD, so the margin of error is fairly high... that's what, 5.6%?

Perhaps you should also poll 2008 #s in the future (Who did you vote for in 2008?; I can imagine Obama winning the 1st CD, but that's a ~8+point improvement over 2008 and seems kind of surprising. Similarly, his #s there are surprisingly good (all better than 2008... and that was against anti-ethanol McCain.) Perhaps it's just that the Plains states are more willing to go Democratic initially; in 2008, polls seemed to have Obama tied in the Dakotas (per Rasmussen), and Nebraska was a swing state at first too (per SUSA.)

"His approval rating there is a positive 51/45 spread and he leads Romney by 9, Huckabee by 11, Gingrich by 19, and Palin by 24 there."

Reading comprehension is a good thing. A nine-point lead (in a smaller sample size, so higher MoE, yes) certainly qualifies as a healthy margin. Is it that hard to read one more sentence to see the factual basis for the statement you couldn't believe based on your pre-existing biases?

Hardly surprising. Omaha is a white-collar city with low unemployment and a pretty good economy. High number of college-educated individuals. And while it's still an R+6 district, Obama's approval has never dipped very far here. Neither party has a majority in registrations, though Republicans maintain a slight plurality.

Redistricting will not break up Omaha - they'd risk a civil rights lawsuit in doing so. If anything, I'd expect them to do what they can to move the reservations in Northeast Nebraska (the only other reliably Democratic areas) into the third district from the first district. They'll move one of the highly populated Omaha suburbs of Papillion or La Vista into the first district, just like they did with Gretna and Blair in 2000.

It's hard to see a redistricting scenario that results in the 2nd District becoming more Republican. The legislature is partisan despite its nonpartisan moniker, but it'd have a hard time justifying splitting up Democratic areas.

The real fight for the 2nd District is going to be with LB 21, which wants to change the way electoral votes are counted. The Democrats only hope there is getting a few Republicans who believe in a nonpartisan legislature to stand up against this nonsense (sense their inability to run solid campaigns has left the Republicans with a filibuster-proof majority).